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Bird on a Wire Customer Reviews (13 - 13 of 13 Reviews)

Mel and Goldie are sexy, but they are wasted in this film
At some point my wife and I had the conversation where you talk about who is sexiest person in movies. She named Mel Gibson and I named Goldie Hawn. After she did the expected double take, I pointed out that Mel and Goldie had done a movie together, "Bird on a Wire," that neither one of us liked. This 1990 film clearly wanted to be a Hitchcock film, but with a broader sense of humor that the master of suspense ever evidenced in any of his masterpieces. Director John Badham clearly settled on a particular voice in this film, and it was just the wrong one.

Gibson is Rick Jarmin, who is in the Federal Witness Protection program because he testified against some government narcs 15 years earlier and they are still looking for him. Now he is working in a gas station in Detroit. Hawn is Marianne Graves, a New York lawyer, who drives into the gas station and recognizes him. He does it, but she knows better, and when she returns to confront him she arrives just in time to save him from being killed by a couple of thugs. It turns out that 15 years ago they were dating each other and then he suddenly disappeared. In "North By Northwest" Cary Grant's life is detoured because he calls out to a boy with a message; in "Bird on a Wire" the we get hammered with two giant coincidences, one on top of another. So much for the subtlety of the master.

Besides, "Bird on a Wire" now turns into something of a slapstick comedy, full of stunts not to try at home. I know the obvious comparison at this point is to Mel Gibson's "Lethal Weapon" films, but there are more similarities to Hawn's "Foul Play." David Carradine is the bad guy who is gunning for Mel and Goldie, since she insists on tagging along. I am not sure why Hawn's character is a lawyer because you keep waiting for it to really matter in this film and it never happens. I would not mind Goldie slipping into her patented bimbo in distress role if they had not made a point of her being a lawyer in the first place. But then the opening sequences of "Bird on a Wire" are completely at odds with the rest of the film. Goldie Hawn is still at the top of my list, but despite this movie, not because of it.

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